The right director and the right script don’t mean anything without the right actor. Performers are the ones who bridge the gap between the minds behind the camera and the ones in front of the screen. It is their personalities that draw us in, their expressions that tell the story, and their faces that we remember.

There were no shortage of great performances this year, across all genres and all budgets. Inevitably, a few stood out above the rest. See our list of the best performances of 2014 after the jump. Read More »

It was probably just a matter of time before Asa Butterfield caught Tim Burton‘s eye. The kid just looks like a Tim Burton character, with his pale skin, dark hair, skinny limbs, and big eyes. And now he may get to be one for real, as Burton is looking to cast him in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Should Butterfield close his deal, he’ll join Eva Green, who previously starred in Burton’s Dark Shadows. Hit the jump for more on Burton’s desire to get Asa Butterfield for Miss Peregrine.

Judging by the first box-office numbers for the Sin City sequel, the real question here might be “did you even see it?” Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez have returned to the black, white, and bloody world of their first collaboration with a couple more stories adapted from Miller’s Sin City comics stories, along with some new material. The first film was novel and striking in aesthetic, and the sequel still looks like almost nothing else.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For brings back some familiar faces (Powers Boothe, Jessica Alba, Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson ,and Mickey Rourke in extreme makeup) to get into some super-dark and violent dealings with new characters played by Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Christopher Meloni. Josh Brolin takes over the character originally played by Clive Owen, while Dennis Haysbert inherits the role originated by the late Michael Clarke Duncan.

That’s a lot of talent, but do all their efforts make for a film that offers audiences a satisfying trip to the underbelly of Sin City? Weigh in below.

Magnolia Pictures has released a new trailer for Gregg Araki‘s White Bird in a Blizzard, which premiered this year at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Shailene Woodley stars in the adaptation of a 1999 novel of the same title by Laura Kasischke. The drama follows as a teenager whose life is thrown into chaos by the mysterious disappearance of her mother (played by Eva Green). A trailer for White Bird in a Blizzard was released days before its Sundance premiere; now a more official trailer is online to promote the September 25th VOD release. (The film will also be available in some theaters on October 24th.) Watch the White Bird in a Blizzard trailer embedded after the jump.

Eva Green showed up in the last live-action film from Tim Burton, Dark Shadows, and now she’s in talks to star in the movie he’s almost ready to make. Burton is directing a film adaptation of the Ranson Riggs novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and Green is in talks to play the title character, who oversees a sort of orphanage for kids who could be characters out of myth or fables. Read More »

Sin City is a place of excess, and the new Sin City: A Dame to Kill For trailer should fit right in. There is the parade of stars and notable guest-stars, from Josh Brolin, Eva Green and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, and Powers Boothe. Then there’s the violence, and the sex, and the splashes of color splattered across the stark black and white imagery. Looks like there’s a lot going on in this new trip to Sin City; watch the trailer below. Read More »

Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green are trapped in a cycle of violent revenge in The Salvation. The film is a Danish Western that premieres soon at Cannes. And so, with the festival about to begin, the first The Salvation trailer has just hit, showing what director Kristian Levring (The King Is Alive, The Intended) has done with the standard-issue western tale of vengeance. Read More »

Penny Dreadful is the new show from Showtime and Sam Mendes, a Victorian-age horror tale that is a bit like an alternate League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, basically a collection of several famous pulp characters that lie in the public domain. It features Dorian Gray, Frankenstein’s monster, players from Dracula, and Eva Green. (The actress is not in the public domain, to be clear.)

The first teaser was brief, but this full trailer has a lot more of Green, plus blood, bodies tangled, twisted and mangled, insects and spiders, and all manner of creepy weirdo images. There’s a lot to take in, and it should be safe for work, though perhaps not for those in particularly sensitive jobs. Read More »